As Towering Star Retires, China Is Unprepared to Replace Him

Yao Ming, left, and his teammates partied after beating Germany at the 2008 Olympics, but China has not produced another star to replace Yao.Credit
Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

BEIJING — Nine seasons after Yao Ming walked onto a basketball court in Texas and inspired a generation of young Chinese to learn to dribble — or at least to watch until the final buzzer — his looming exit from professional basketball is being accompanied by nostalgia for the man who became a national hero. It is also triggering frustration over why no one in China, which has tens of millions of basketball players, appears capable of replacing him as an N.B.A. star.

For nearly a decade, China has been enthralled by the cult of Yao spun by Communist Party propagandists and corporate sponsors: the winner, the gentle giant, the favorite son. His image was ubiquitous here, and the public basked in his glow even as other Chinese players in the N.B.A. sputtered.

Yet his retirement is forcing many Chinese to acknowledge that their country has relied on Yao alone for victory and national pride, ignoring shortcomings in the state sports system that leave China facing a future bereft of N.B.A. and Olympic basketball glory.

“We can either choose to blame the gods and whine about our misfortune or we can step up to the plate and train the next generation of basketball talent,” Zhang Weiping, a basketball commentator and former national team member, wrote in an editorial last week.

Yi Jianlian, who Time magazine once predicted would be the next Yao, is now an unrestricted free agent after being dropped by the Washington Wizards. Sun Yue, the only Chinese national to play point guard in the N.B.A., was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers but played 10 games, averaging a mere 0.6 points, before his demotion to the Development League. He has returned to the Chinese Basketball Association.

China, Zhang wrote in Basketball Pioneers magazine, must develop smaller, faster and more skilled players like the ones who thrive in the West.

Photo

Yao Ming led the Chinese team into the 2008 Olympics in Beijing but could not lead them to victory.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

“China has no shortage of this kind of talent,” he said. “We simply have coaching and systemic problems that prevent us from discovering and developing these players.”

While the United States develops players through an almost Darwinian process of natural selection in youth leagues, high school teams and colleges, China has a rigid, Soviet-inspired state network of athletic schools, coaches and bureaucrats that selects players as early as age 4.

Yao, the son of exceptionally tall basketball players, was a 5-foot-7 third grader when he was plucked by a local sports school for a life of endless drills geared entirely toward molding him into Olympic material. Every professional Chinese player has a similar body and biography. And yet, before and during the 30-year-old Yao’s N.B.A. career, China has managed to reach only the Olympic quarterfinals.

The state recruiting strategy is rife with problems. Officials choose children from across the country based solely on how tall they are. “If height were the determining factor, we would be the best team in the world,” said Li Nan, 32, who works for a Beijing advertising agency and plays basketball in his free time, noting that every member of the national team is 6-9 or taller.

But youth and height, as any N.B.A. fan knows, do not alone predict victory on the court.

“At age 10, you can’t identify the next Allen Iverson,” Bob Donewald Jr., the American coach of China’s national team, said in a phone interview. Nor the next Derrick Rose, the N.B.A.’s most valuable player last season, who stands 6-3.

As the coach of the national team and before that the Shanghai Sharks, Yao’s former team, Donewald sees the structural problems plaguing Chinese basketball up close. The system’s failures, he said, directly affect the quality of his players.

“What’s amazing is that in a country of 1.3 billion I can’t find a point guard,” he said.

A case in point is Shanghai, population 22 million, which picks a maximum of 30 people for its club team. “If you’re not selected, there is no coaching, no practices and no training,” Donewald said. “China is filtering through guys and cutting them off so early there’s no way for them to get better.”

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A Chinese girl with a bust of Yao, who was relied on for national pride, at the 2008 Games.Credit
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Therein lies the biggest obstacle for Chinese basketball. Despite a generation of men who grew up with Yao and the N.B.A. and who play informally in cities and towns across the country, they are never fully developed. Furthermore, the disconnect between China’s state-run athletic schools and its general educational institutions prevents older children not recruited into the system from getting an opportunity to play.

Those who do play on public courts are in their 20s or older, Donewald said, reflecting Chinese society’s traditionally single-minded focus on education. That means most children spend their days and nights studying for tests, not playing pick-up games in the park or practicing in after-school programs.

While Donewald has seen some incremental change, he says the government squandered Yao’s popularity by not creating the type of grass-roots opportunities for Chinese amateurs to improve — a formula that seemingly works in the United States.

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“When you work in Chinese basketball, you realize that the C.B.A., the clubs and the national team don’t care and don’t want to hear about the process,” Donewald said. “They just want results. But it’s by building the infrastructure that you win more medals and make more stars.”

No matter how Chinese sports officials address the dearth of basketball talent, resting on Yao’s laurels is no longer an option. His departure, some fans said, has stirred a surprising emotion: relief.

“Yao’s presence was like a massive shadow that no one could escape,” said Li Nan, the amateur player in Beijing. “Everybody thought if they wanted to make it to the N.B.A., they would have to be like Yao — a 7-6 Chinese ambassador.”

According to a recent report in the Chinese news media, Yao no longer wants to carry the national team on the court or the country’s pride on his shoulders.

“Chinese basketball,” he said, “should no longer hope for anything from me.”